The New Pictures

Evensong (Gaumont-British). Adapted from a novel by Beverley Nichols and a play by Nichols and Edward Knoblock, this picture mournfully examines the career of an opera singer (Evelyn Lave).* Irish-born Maggie O'Neill puts aside an Irish sweetheart for art's sake. At the behest of the impresario who launches her, the singer takes the name Irela. After a brilliant command performance in Vienna, she is about to run off with the Archduke Theodore when he learns his cousin Ferdinand has been assassinated in Sarajevo. Theodore marries into his own class. During the War Irela's Irishman is shellshocked, dies. Years later, when she has grown old and dumpy, Irela's faithful impresario urges her to retire gracefully. Obstinately singing Mimi in La Boheme, she beholds the audience giving its applause to a young and vivacious Musetta (Soprano Conchita Supervia). Afterward Theodore visits .her, tells her he is free. But when Irela suspects he pities her, she brusquely dismisses him.

Directed by Victor Saville in the lethargic British manner, Evensong is chiefly notable for the fact that slim, blonde, pretty Evelyn Laye manages to look bitterly old, awkwardly massive in its final sequences. Good shot: the cafe scene from La Boheme, in which Spanish Soprano Supervia ably sings Musetta's Waltz.

The Firebird (Warner) is a routine Viennese boudoir-&Tpistol mystery which leaves the vague impression that a casual murder may be a fine, broadening influence on a woman. A conceited actor (Ricardo Cortez), who is fond of playing Stravinsky's blood-tingling Firebird, is found shot dead in his bedroom. Was he killed by his onetime wife, whom he had publicly knocked down for dunning him for alimony? Or by his neighbor Her Excellency whom he had invited to his rooms at midnight? Or by His Excellency who may have known of that fact? Or by Their Excellencies' daughter (Anita Louise), who cast sheep's eyes at the actor? Or by the daughter's mam'selle, who looked enigmatic about it all?

Most audiences will spot the murderer easily, long before the Inspector (C. Aubrey Smith) breaks down a mendacious confession, obtains a truthful one, and benignly subscribes to the general idea that the killer was only a slightly foolish person who sought to escape a stuffy background.

Limehouse Blues (Paramount). Putting Anna May Wong and George Raft in a picture with a Limehouse background was a good idea to start with but it is the only good idea in Limehouse Blues. Raft is a half-caste Chinese proprietor of a nasty little place called the Lily Garden. Although the scene is London's Chinatown, his New-Yorkese is explained by having him a transplanted U.S. under-worldling. The plot concerns his love for Toni (Jean Parker) whom he protects when a constable wants to arrest her for stealing a watch; a love that persists in spite of her almost immediate attachment to the young proprietor of a dog store whom she meets while taking a walk. The threat to these somewhat incredible proceedings is supplied by Miss Wong, Raft's Chinese sweetheart. If it is not much of a threat the fault is less hers than a role which gives her half a dozen lines and a fake Oriental dance as her total assignment for the first three reels, one closeup scene registering jealousy and another registering defiance in the last four. At the climax the dog-store owner has been put on the spot by Raft who, in a fit of remorse, goes through a hail of police bullets to save his rival's life and die in a moire silk dressing gown at the foot of a joss-house idol.

* Author Nichols was long the private secretary of the late Soprano Helen ("Xellie") Porter Mitchell who, born near Melbourne, Australia, took the name of Nellie Melba.

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